D.O.D. Format make a problem ?

When buying a used laptop from an owner who used the D.O.D. format to erase previous information, does that make it more of a problem, to introduce a new OS through a new installation disk ? Also, would this be easier to apply the XP OS, over a disk that would have had a previous Vista OS. Please help, Bob

Hi, and thank you many times over. It seemed like a dumb question, but I was afraid of buying a laptop that had this D.O.D. format. I wanted to install XP, for many reasons, and didn't want to have to install Vista, because its previous OS. Thank you again, It's very appreciated !!!!!!!

Bobnoell, the D.O.D. specification for data erasure is not a format. It specifies the data to be written and the number of times to write different data patterns. The original intent was to prevent data retrieval by forensics. Today the US military no longer considers that erasure spec to be good enough and requires degaussing or destruction of the media. There is some info on this at Wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N.....ty_Program

When it comes time to reinstall an OS, a drive that has been wiped will look blank whether it was wiped with the old milspec method or just written with all zeroes. None of these methods will cause problems or make it easier to reinstall.